


The Sock

by BreeZ_Claire



Series: As Days Go By [8]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bromance, Comedy, Gen, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 00:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreeZ_Claire/pseuds/BreeZ_Claire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Pendragons don't wear pink. Merlin's a puppy-sized-elephant. Someone uses footwear as a beer koozie. Oh, and four manly men have a pillow war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sock

" _MER_ LIN!"

Merlin winced, laundry basket in hand. He had hoped that he'd be able to last at least half a day without facing the Rage of Pendragon, or so he called it. Hoping it wasn't too much for the Gods to let him slip upstairs into Arthur's room to place all his laundry back in place, slyly hiding the 'shirts of a changed colour' on the bottom of the drawers before slipping out again. Hoping it wasn't too much that Arthur wouldn't notice that all his whites were now turned pink by one – not both mind you, how only one of the offending socks escaped, Merlin would never know – of his red socks.

On the upside, Merlin now understood why his mother always cautioned him to roll his pairs of socks straight out of the dryer so he wouldn't lose them. It was concluded then and there that Hunith Emrys was a very brilliant woman and Merlin should've listened to her more in the past instead of phasing out of lectures.

But then again, all that practice of phasing out came in handy when facing Arthur's lecturing, which he was most certainly about to receive.

Lance had caught up him on his way up the stairs; he was heading out with Gwen to pick out China patterns or something - There were a lot of wedding things going on that Merlin really didn't understand…apparently there were cake samples to choose from as well. Who knew? "Why couldn't you just," Lance wiggled his fingers in the air, implying magic. "You know."

Merlin sighed. It wasn't as if he hadn't tried, nor wanted to try. He was used to removing small stains here and there; ink stains on his tie, questionable spots on the upholstery after a party, ice cream drops on his pants, and even nail polish when Arthur and Morgana had a fight about her doing her nails in the apartment ("This is a _man's_ apartment, Morgana! I will not have you defiling it with your girly 'Fuchsia Shock' and 'Shell We Dance'… _stuff_!" "You're just jealous you can't pull them off anymore like when you used to go on your crazy-ass spring vacations with your crazy-ass friends!") and spilt the little vials all over the hardwood floor. So it was second nature to him when he'd dropped one of Gaius' potions on the floor at The Magic Dragon to whisper a few words and clean it up again.

The next hour and a half consisted of Gaius hounding him on the importance of hard work and 'not relying on magic to solve every difficulty that may arise!' so Merlin promptly swore he'd do his best to cut down on using magic to solve mundane problems – and argued fervently that reheating certain caffeinated drinks were in fact essential to life.

So when he'd accidentally washed one of Arthur's red socks in with the man's whites, resulting in an abundance of pink dress shirts, he tried bleach in vain. With a small sigh, which in no way came out as a whimper, he began his funeral march back to his flat.

And of course Arthur would be right there when he walked in.

"What," he gingerly lifted a shirt, rubbing his thumb against the rosy collar. "Did you _do_?" He started rummaging through the basket still in Merlin's hands, muttering in horror when he kept picking out pink dress shirt after pink dress shirt and not a single white.

"N-now Arthur it isn't that bad —"

" _Isn't that bad_? Are you daft?!"

"It's not like it looks horrible, a lot of guys wear pink."

"Pendragon's do not wear _pink_ , _Mer_ lin!" He spat out every word. Even Morgana preferred her blood red lipstick over her coral shade.

"Well," Merlin ventured a cheeky smile. "Does this get me out of laundry duty then?" Arthur seemed not to hear, though his face was grow into a familiar shade a red.

"How could you screw this up Merlin, I have work tomorrow!" He dug through to the bottom of the basket until there was a sudden stop. "What is this?"

He was holding up a bright red sock, surprisingly un-faded and looking happy and healthy as ever, in his fist and looked at Merlin with a look as if to say, 'you'd better have a good explanation for this.'

"Umm, it's your lucky red sock?" he smiled nervously. "So really, you can't be mad when it was your own sock that turned your shirts red. Think of it as shirt and sock incest…except no; don't think about it like that…umm…or maybe –"

" _Mer_ lin," The blond spoke with annoyance. "This isn't my sock."

"W-what? Yes it -"

But then Merlin remembered. He realized that Arthur didn't own any red socks. Red sweaters, yes, red shirts, yes, but not socks. In fact, the only person in the whole apartment that owned red socks was Merlin himself.

Oh. That's right.

The first time Arthur ever wore socks of any colour was that weekend when he'd run out of socks and took some from Merlin – without asking! They suited him so well that Arthur took to wearing them all around the apartment whenever he didn't need to go out. This was partly to piss Merlin off ("They're my lucky socks Arthur! Give them back!" "There is no such thing Merlin, stop being such a girl.") and partly because they were so comfortable. Merlin knew so from experience; those were his favourite pair! And also because he found Arthur more often than not wiggling his toes in the fluffy red material while resting his feet on the coffee table.

But wait.

Oh no…then that meant—

"One of my socks is missing!" He dropped the basket, narrowly missing Arthur's feet as he frantically ran through the apartment. His other lucky sock had to be here somewhere!

Arthur took his laundry basket back to his room, sighing and mentally making note to buy more white shirts before tomorrow morning, before coming back out to find Merlin uprooting the couch cushions and several of the baskets underneath the glass table. He suppressed an eye roll as the dangling limbs flung around, throwing Merlin behind the couch with a heavy thump. It could have been anywhere between ten to twenty minutes later until Arthur finally managed to get the attention of his frantic flatmate, shouting a trail of 'Merlins' as he made his way around the living room, cleaning up the disaster.

He'd just finished putting the last wicker basket under the table when Merlin –or rather Merlin's head—popped up from behind the couch, staring wide-eyed at Arthur. The blond tried his best not to laugh at the lone head without a body.

Arthur stood up, " _Mer_ lin. Come here and calm down before you give yourself a heart attack."

The 'floating head' just frowned. "Do I look like a dog to you?"

Arthur paused for a moment, taking in the cocked head on the couch—a mop of dark brown, almost black, hair with large blue eyes and even larger ears. He smiled. "With those ears? I'd say you look more like a puppy-sized elephant."

And while Arthur fell back on the couch laughing, Merlin just continued to glare until reaching down to grab and hurl a pillow at the prat. He ducked down when Arthur promptly caught the pillow and threw it back.

Taking advantage of his position on the L-couch, which was stocked full with throw pillows, Arthur jumped back onto the couch and loaded his arms with projectiles. He laughed when Merlin realized he only had the one pillow on the sofa chair. " _En garde_ , Wizard Boy."

Merlin smirked and, with a flash of gold, found himself surrounded by the throw pillows previously at his opponent's disposal. "Ha!"

"That's cheating!" Arthur jumped, throwing pillow after pillow.

"It's called using your strengths." Merlin yelled as he hit the ground and rolled, using his hoodie to aid him in sliding across the hardwood. From his position in the corner behind the L-couch, he shot a few pillows at Arthur, who'd now jumped onto the sofa chair. Arthur blocked and whipped a few more pillows before jumping down and making a tackle over the glass coffee table. He slipped on the floor but made a grab for an arm, managing to take hold of Merlin's hoodie sleeve but Merlin—the sneaky git—squirmed out of his sweater before Arthur could stop sliding.

Merlin laughed as the lawyer crashed into the wall of pillows, "You know, either I'm getting better at this or you're getting out of shape!" Because usually by now, Merlin would be pinned to the floor by a large couch cushion while Arthur sat on top of him laughing. Arthur glared at him from where he lay on his back.

"Are you calling me fat?" He asked incredulously.

Merlin pretended to ponder this for a good several seconds before Arthur bull rushed him. The tackling and pillow throwing went on for another few minutes and somewhere in the midst of jumps and lunges, Merlin got the brilliant idea of magicking the table into the far corner near the kitchen so no one would end up in the hospital like last time. The distraction was enough for Arthur to make his move, locking the younger man in headlock. Merlin struggled to get loose but Arthur was obviously too strong for him. He began noogying full force.

"Ngggahhh!"

"Still think I need to get in shape?"

"No!"

Arthur let go, sending the boy tumbling back and rubbing his head. Merlin shook out his mop of hair and would've leapt forward if it weren't for the shower of pillows that rained down on them just then. Arthur ducked for cover, rolling along the floor and hiding beside the L-couch and Merlin, still on the ground, rolled backwards to grab a pillow to shield himself as he took on a position somewhat relating to an overturned turtle. When the rain of pillows ceased, two pairs of bright blue eyes gazed up to see Gwaine leaning on the railings at the top of the stair landing.

"Having fun there lads?"

Merlin laughed. Gwaine slept in a mountain of pillows –Merlin always related it to the baby's room in _Spirited Away_ — so he never really ran out of ammo during pillow fights because he'd always just retreat to his room and come out waging war like the Terminator. Merlin kicked his pillow upwards, barely reaching the landing when Gwaine stood.

"Did we wake you?"

"What, with the Queen over there throwing a temper tantrum? Of course not." Gwaine made his way down the stairs, jabbing a thumb in Arthur's direction with a smirk. At this point Arthur was leaning against the side of the couch, head propped up against his crossed arms.

"At least I don't spend a lifetime primping in the bathroom," he muttered.

"Some of us actually care about how we look in the morning." The brunet threw a heavy pillow at Arthur, who caught it easily.

"Me? I guess you haven't seen Merlin first thing in the morning—"

"Oi!"

"—what with his massive case of bed head and keyboard-marked face—Oof!" He never got to finish his sentence because by that time Merlin had started to fling pillow after pillow in his direction, laughing in success when one bounced off the man's head and sent the pillows Arthur had managed to catch flying off in all directions. It didn't take long for things to pick up after that and soon pillows – throw pillows, goose down pillows, big pillows, small pillows…every type of pillow imaginable actually—found their way thrown and scattered across the entire first floor of the apartment.

Merlin wasn't sure when exactly Lance had joined in; the man was yelling at them for smushing up his wedding cake samples. But as the sun began to set and lights were turned on, the four of them found themselves divided. Gwaine and Merlin took cover behind the kitchen island with a fort of heavy pillows stacked up so the entire kitchen area was blocked off while Lance and Arthur had pushed together the sofa chair and the L-couch to create a fortress of their own. Insults were thrown around when heavy fire wasn't being exchanged and somehow blankets were brought in to be used as shields as one pair attempted to invade the other pair's castle.

"My sock!" Amongst the hustle and bustle, Merlin had flung open the refrigerator door to quickly block a rain of fluffy doom when he froze. His other lucky sock was currently sitting rather snugly in the crisper protecting a half-empty beer bottle. Gwaine, who had taken refuge beside him, gave a hearty chuckle.

"Oh yeah, we were trying to keep the beers cold last night" –another night, another drunken hoopla. Apparently towards the end of the party, when the remaining group decided that cleaning up drunk to avoid cleaning up with a hang-over was greatest idea since the creation of beer itself, someone had decided to use one of their socks as a beer cozy. That someone being Arthur.

Merlin narrowed his eyes as he slowing closed the fridge door. Arthur and Lance were currently hiding under blanketed cover, but their laughing eyes could be seen peaking over the edge of the couch. "This. Means. War."

And thus began the Great Pillow War of all time.

**Author's Note:**

> The term/idea/thing "Puppy-sized-elephant" was borrowed from the vlogbrothers


End file.
